Surveying the cornucopia in our supermarkets, we may think that this is a time of unparalleled choice for fruit and vegetables, but the Victorians would have tutted at the Spartan monotony of our diet.

Pruning is a bit like sculpting. Well, it’s as close as most of us will ever get to the Rodin experience anyway. You need to think about the shape that you are releasing from the mass of material in front of you. It’s not just a matter of hacking away growth that happens to be tripping you up on the garden path. When you are pruning you have to keep in your head a very clear idea of each shrub’s natural form and habit. If you don’t do that, then everything ends up looking the same, humps of barbered greenery, none of it allowed to express an opinion.